originally posted by: Tempter
Whoah, the British Intelligence forces were a part of this? Where is some documentation on what the guy in the 1st video is claiming?

The governments of: the USA, Canada, the UK and Australia ... all spy on each other's citizens. The hosting country makes absolutely certain that it
is easy to do and that the collection is without holes. Then they share the information with one another's Intelligence Community. It gets around
everybody's privacy issues (ETA and Collection Laws).

originally posted by: Grambler
Thats not to say Clapper isn't telling the truth this time, he may be. Thats why I would like to see more facts.

Very doubtful you will ever see a case where Clapper was outright lying.

I already know what you're thinking ... what you remember. I know people think he lied ... but he didn't. His expression of the truth that 'one
time' was as clear as a bell and utterly truthful ... it just wasn't the 'whole truth' and he wasn't pressed on it.

originally posted by: Sillyolme
If the tweets are true trump just admitted that the justice dept is suspicious of his behavior .
Judges don't issue warrants on a whim.

It's a little thing called Probable cause

But the FISA courts approve nearly every warrant that is brought to them.

But the FISC has declined just 11 of the more than 33,900 surveillance requests made by the government in 33 years, the Wall Street Journal
reported Sunday. That's a rate of .03 percent, which raises questions about just how much judicial oversight is actually being provided.

The article is from November 20th, which places the calls for him to be fired around the time Trump was elected. According to the CIA officer the
Admiral went to Trump Tower and met with Trump when he was elected and told him about the surveillance being conducted on him to cover his own ass
because it was an abuse of agency resources and was done for political reasons only. Shortly after that meeting is when the calls for him to be fired
started.

I think Trump knew this was going on and let the Democrats / Obama walk face first into a setup to expose what they were doing. The time lines
provided by Levin, the fact the Obama administration is the one who set up the meeting between Sessions and the Russian ambassador and the same line
of attacks by the left using the bs russia excuse on more than one person.

It is more than just coincidental.. its evidence of a concerted effort to undermine Trump.

Lets see how the Democrats respond to Trumps call for a Congressional investigation... I would wager they will hem haw around the topic and want the
deputy AG to run an investigation.

And, how very predictable that the top Democrats are
sharply criticizing the decision.

“One of the focus points of the House Intelligence Committee's investigation is the U.S. government's response to actions taken by Russian
intelligence agents during the presidential campaign,” Nunes said in a statement.

“As such, the Committee will make inquiries into whether the government was conducting surveillance activities on any political party’s
campaign officials or surrogates, and we will continue to investigate this issue if the evidence warrants it.”

LMAO....I'm sure if I cared how seriously other people took me, the last place I would find refuge to assure that would be on ATS.

sport...

Hey -- you went there first. I'm not going to simply "take" the impugning of my intelligence by someone who was proven completely wrong.

I wasn't proven wrong about anything as I'm not making any claims. I asked for sources and got them.

As far as impunity on your intellect, that's your own issue to work out.

Now how about facts versus fiction:

White House aides have internally circulated an article on Breitbart titled: “Mark Levin to Congress: Investigate Obama’s ‘Silent Coup’ vs.
Trump.” Breitbart is a right-leaning news organization that is a rather unreliable source of information. Often the material that is published is
derivative and twisted in misleading ways.
However, a White House spokesman told The Fact Checker that the White House instead is relying on reports “from BBC, Heat St., New York Times, Fox
News, among others.” He provided a list of five articles.

The claims being made by Trump amount to nothing more than "reports" from agencies that he publicly decries. The media.

But first let's start with Breitbart

We are going to start with the Breitbart article, which lists two key data points that appear to relate to the president’s claim:

June 2016: FISA request. The Obama administration files a request with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) to monitor communications
involving Donald Trump and several advisers. The request, uncharacteristically, is denied.

October: FISA request. The Obama administration submits a new, narrow request to the FISA court, now focused on a computer server in Trump Tower
suspected of links to Russian banks. No evidence is found — but the wiretaps continue, ostensibly for national security reasons, Andrew McCarthy at
National Review later notes. The Obama administration is now monitoring an opposing presidential campaign using the high-tech surveillance powers of
the federal intelligence services.

But these data points are not based on reporting by Breitbart. Instead Breitbart link to a report which appeared in Heat Street, another
right-leaning news organization: “EXCLUSIVE: FBI ‘Granted FISA Warrant’ Covering Trump Camp’s Ties To Russia.” It was written by Louise
Mensch, a former Tory member of the British Parliament and an independent journalist. This is one of the news reports identified by the White House,
and it’s the most important one.
This article claimed: “Two separate sources with links to the counter-intelligence community have confirmed to Heat Street that the FBI sought, and
was granted, a FISA court warrant in October, giving counter-intelligence permission to examine the activities of ‘U.S. persons’ in Donald
Trump’s campaign with ties to Russia.”
Mensch claimed that the warrant was related to an FBI investigation of possible secret channel of email communication from the Trump Organization to a
Russian bank—an investigation that, as far as anyone knows, went nowhere.
“The FISA warrant was granted in connection with the investigation of suspected activity between the server [in Trump Tower] and two banks, SVB Bank
and Alfa Bank. However, it is thought in the intelligence community that the warrant covers any ‘US person’ connected to this investigation, and
thus covers Donald Trump and at least three further men who have either formed part of his campaign or acted as his media surrogates,” Mensch
wrote. The Washington Post for months has sought to confirm this report of a FISA warrant related to the Trump campaign but has been unable to do so.
Presumably other U.S. news organizations have tried to do so as well. So one has to take this claim with a huge dose of skepticism. Indeed, the New
York Times reported before the election that the FBI “ultimately concluded that there could be an innocuous explanation, like a marketing email or
spam, for the computer contacts” with the Russian banks.

Then the BBC

Interestingly, as far as we can tell, only two other reports have touched on this FISA claim, and they also have British connections. One is a report
in the BBC from January, which the White House also cited as a source. The BBC reported:

Lawyers from the National Security Division in the Department of Justice then drew up an application. They took it to the secret US court that deals
with intelligence, the FISA court, named after the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. They wanted permission to intercept the electronic records
from two Russian banks.

Their first application, in June, was rejected outright by the judge. They returned with a more narrowly drawn order in July and were rejected again.
Finally, before a new judge, the order was granted, on 15 October, three weeks before election day.

Neither Mr Trump nor his associates are named in the FISA order, which would only cover foreign citizens or foreign entities – in this case the
Russian banks. But ultimately, the investigation is looking for transfers of money from Russia to the United States, each one, if proved, a felony
offense.

And, the Guardian

Finally, there was a report in The Guardian, which reported on the supposed June FISA request, but could not confirm the October one. (The White House
did not cite the Guardian.)

The Guardian has learned that the FBI applied for a warrant from the foreign intelligence surveillance (FISA) court over the summer in order to
monitor four members of the Trump team suspected of irregular contacts with Russian officials. The FISAc ourt turned down the application asking FBI
counter-intelligence investigators to narrow its focus. According to one report, the FBI was finally granted a warrant in October, but that has not
been confirmed, and it is not clear whether any warrant led to a full investigation.

And finally 3 others..

The White House provided three other sources. Two, a National Review article and a Fox News interview, are simply derivative of the Heat Street
article, with no independent confirmation. The third is a New York Times report that intelligence agencies “are examining intercepted
communications and financial transactions” as part of a probe of possible links between Russian officials and Trump campaign aides. (We recall the
president has previously deemed Times reporting on this matter as “fake news.”)

So, what are we left with?

well...

Only two articles, both with British roots, have reported that a FISA court order was granted in October to examine possible activity between two
Russian banks and a computer server in the Trump Tower. This claim has not been confirmed by an U.S. news organizations. Moreover, neither article
says President Obama requested the order or that it resulted in the tapping of Trump’s phone lines.
Moreover, the articles do not support the White House’s claim that these were “potentially politically motivated investigations” led by
President Obama. The articles all suggest the FISA requests — if they happened — were done by the intelligence agencies & FBI.

The BBC says the investigation was prompted by a tip from a Baltic country abut possible criminal activity:

Last April, the CIA director was shown intelligence that worried him. It was – allegedly – a tape recording of a conversation about money from the
Kremlin going into the US presidential campaign.

It was passed to the US by an intelligence agency of one of the Baltic States. The CIA cannot act domestically against American citizens so a joint
counter-intelligence task force was created.

A decent summary on wrapping it up

While the Trump White House cited five news reports to justify its request for a congressional investigation, only two actually are relevant.
It’s certainly ironic that the Trump White House — which has heavily criticized articles relying on anonymous sources — now relies on articles
based on anonymous sources that cites information that has not been confirmed by any U.S. news organization. It would be amusing if it were not so
sad.
Even if these reports are accepted as accurate, neither back up Trump’s claims that Obama ordered the tapping of his phone calls. Moreover, they
also do not back up the administration’s revised claim of politically motivated investigations.

We're not talking about some local yokel judge on the circuit court you know. These are federal judges and no matter what your political leanings one
must admit or at least acknowledge that federal judges don't get that position by being pigeons.
Therefore the likelihood of any federal judge issuing a warrant against a presidential candidate or the president elect is pretty unlikely. Let's
keep this within the realm of actual probability.

This means the fact they rejected the initial requests by the Obama admin in June is nearly unprecedented and speaks volumes to the fact as how much
the admin was reaching. So if only .03 percent of warrants are denied, it does appear they offer warrants on a whim.

Exactly
This is why it is so odd that 3 warrants had to be asked for before one was approved.

Well the left relies on unnamed officials to attack Trump so fair is fair I guess..

Secondly we know surveillance was ordered because the FISA warrants disclosures were printed in liberal media outlets. Whats in question is whether
the warrants were based on valid info regarding Russia or if the info was falsified to go after Trump using intelligence assets.

This content community relies on user-generated content from our member contributors. The opinions of our members are not those of site ownership who maintains strict editorial agnosticism and simply provides a collaborative venue for free expression.